


'Cause I Can't Sing Or Dance

by Meduseld



Category: The Gentlemen (2019)
Genre: Falling In Love, Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:21:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24951499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meduseld/pseuds/Meduseld
Summary: Raymond and Coach, a week, a month and a year, after.
Relationships: Coach/Raymond Smith
Comments: 4
Kudos: 104





	'Cause I Can't Sing Or Dance

To pay back the fourth strike, or fifth, really, depending on how you count it, Raymond refurbishes the gym.

Or, Raymond does it with Mickey's money but one tends to imply the other anyway. And it's not like Mickey doesn't have reasons to be grateful.

Or to want to invest in possible future muscle.

The boys are swift about it, the Toddlers actually not that annoying when they have their hands full and Bunny happy to swap tips on getting bulked up. There’s no real friction.

Or at least not where Raymond expected to find it.

Coach frowns the entire time, pushing up his glasses with his thumb and forefinger in the way he does. The way that always catches his eye.

Raymond makes sure to have a moment with him on the way out, studiedly casual because he can smell ages of sweat and other bodily odors on the air in a way that makes him _itchy_. But it’s not polite to run out.

“It’s just a start Coach, I know I’m still on the wrong foot in your ledger. Looks nice, though, doesn’t it?” Raymond tries, watching the way the everything in here revolves around the man.

The way Raymond liked him instantly, the way they fell into lockstep and something close to friendship.

Coach frowns harder. Raymond hates it.

“Not very clean, is it?” he says and Raymond knows the shock shows on his face.

No one has ever accused him of neglecting cleanliness before.

“Not that, Ray. It’s just. Has a bad impression on the boys, you follow?” Coach says, thick eyebrows knitting together.

Raymond has the weirdest urge to uses his fingers to smooth them out, back into two.

Then his brain catches up with him.

“Right” he says, suddenly embarrassed. He _owes_ Coach, well and true, and he’s never had problems in payment like this before. And anyway, the Toddlers tumbled into their path, not the other way around.

It doesn’t matter though. Not with the way he wants to make this right.

Coach sighs.

“Well. Not like they didn’t know what dealing with you might bring them, anyway. Don’t do it again” he says and Raymond nods, mind working.

He hadn’t gotten that good of an impression of Raymond’s very nice backyard, last time, bodies and boxed Fletcher and all that. He hadn’t stuck around for the food, either.

“Noted” Raymond says, still tense.

Last time, he had said he didn’t want to see Raymond ever again. Coach shakes his head, but he seems fond.

And the scales in Raymond’s head tip back to balance and he can breathe a little better.

Coach is a good man, like Raymond isn’t, and that’s good. That’s best.

*

There’s a nice secret rhythm to the way Coach hits the bag.

Raymond couldn’t pick it out at first, but it’s there now, soothing and smooth. The bag sways easily in his yard, the fancy set up he sprung for.

Raymond can’t pay back the influence on Coach’s boys, the way they seek him and his men out.

But he makes sure they’re looked after if they’re the type, or scared away from the life if they aren’t.

Coach isn’t happy about it, or truly unhappy either, the numbers in his head always skewing to loss and at least this time around he knows the players.

The family, if he’s being honest.

And anyway, there’s been a lot less scowling unibrow situations since Raymond put the punching bag in.

They’ve all lot better than the first time, these yard days, even if they’d been the perfect team in front of Fletcher’s arrogance and begging.

That’s what gave him the idea, honestly.

Paying Coach back in fine mostly Wagyu based lunches made on his very nice state-of-the-art barbecue, now alongside a space to train in while Raymond cooks, is taking the long way, but by now neither of them mind. It’s nice.

Coach works the bag with his usual methodical patience, hitting every area equally, the way Raymond would. If the bag was a man, and years ago it was, he’d be pulp by now.

Raymond likes having someone to cook for.

He likes it being Coach, his bare, toned arms moving like they’re cutting through water in his periphery, even better.

“Raymond?” Coach says, still staring at the bag, still swinging from his hips.

“Hmm?” he says, flipping the meat. Coach talks sometimes, never anything too heavy.

Just who in the gym knocked up his girl, who has a mother sicker than cancer.

He never asks Raymond to do anything. It’s not part of their arrangement.

And every once in a while Raymond tells him things too. The personal kind.

It’s more comfortable than he’s been in a long time.

Which is when it changes, of course.

“That Fletcher. He right about you?” Coach says, staring forward like the bag might hit back.

For a moment, Raymond’s vision goes grey.

He was expecting this, eventually. Sooner than this, if he’s honest.

Fletcher had needled at him because of what people said about Raymond. True things.

He’s stuck by Mickey not because Mickey didn’t care, but because Mickey did and never allowed anyone to use it against him either.

Knows about loyalty, Mickey.

“Yeah” he says, looking right at him.

Raymond’s not a coward, at his heart.

“Alright” Coach says, looking back.

He remembers enough to pull up the collar of his soaked shirt, wipe at his lip. It doesn’t help but it’s the thought.

Then he puts a stone heavy hand on Raymond’s shoulder, and leans in.

It’s a quick kiss, more like a press.

He turns back to the bag and Raymond to the grill.

That’s alright then. More than.

*

The phone rings and Raymond groans.

It’s either early or late, the light through the window grey, and that means it can’t be good news.

By now most the mess with Matthew and Dry Eye and the Russians has been cleaned up, even if the business itself is still recovering, and Roz tries to keep Mickey in check.

Sometimes she even manages it.

So it means something has to have happened.

He reaches out blindly to find, of course, that it’s not his phone.

Raymond chucks the one that is _still_ wailing on vaguely behind him.

The pillow shakes as the man next to him laughs, catching it easily.

Coach drags a chin over Raymond’s bare shoulder, a sort of apology.

He refuses to upgrade that fucking thing, more brick based abomination than cellphone, no matter how many times Raymond offers to upgrade him. With money from legal income, even.

Maybe it’s because his boys also give him good natured shit over it.

But the close press of his body, solid and strong, soothes the annoyance.

“Someone dead?” he mumbles, rubbing his face against Coach’s broad chest.

So what if he likes the way Coach’s pale skin goes red, stays that way, where only Raymond ever gets to see it.

“Nah” Coach says, scratching thick fingers along Raymond’s scalp. That’s what _he_ likes.

So maybe they’re boring old men.

Better that than the things that feature in the Toddlers’ little videos. Sometimes he _still_ has trouble sleeping.

“Ella’s girl got first place, out in California” he adds, proud as can be.

Coach doesn’t have children on the books, or by blood, but in every way that counts he’s a father and grandfather and great grandfather many times over by now. And by some miracle, most of them even like Raymond.

At least they don’t mind handing him babies when Coach presses him into celebrations in dingy yellow council flats.

He likes them better than the grownups. And that way no one goes out the window.

“That the ballet one or violin?” Raymond mumbles, starting to measure his hand against Coach’s broad thigh. There’s a freckle there he likes.

“ _Kickboxing_ ” Coach says, because those are his favorites.

The ones that take after him; quick and sharp and stinging. The ones that never end up working with men like Raymond.

“We should celebrate then” Raymond adds, finally dropping his face where he wants to, nuzzling Coach where he’s growing hot and read and heavy.

“Right Ray” Coach says with a smile, grabbing Raymond’s hair in earnest now, pressing those calloused fingertips into the base of his skull.

Just the way they both like it.

That, in Raymond’s estimation, that’s bliss.

**Author's Note:**

> I started this after the first time I saw _The Gentlemen_. Because of quarantine, I’ve seen it at least five times by now and it was enough to shake the rest of this loose. The title is [a Rocky quote](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1017776_rocky/quotes?), and I’m not sorry.


End file.
